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The cooking is equally elemental, with the most basic dishes done just well enough. Broths tend to be watery and cellophane noodle dishes taste rather like, um, cellophane. Still, if you order well, you are sure to find a favorite dish. You'd be hard-pressed to spend more than $20 per person, and service is speedy and sincere.

I may not have the money to move to Seattle, America's most expensive city in a recent Forbes magazine ranking. But when I visit my brother there, I can at least afford the Emerald City's alluring and ubiquitous pho shops.

I've yet to discover an equivalent in Miami, but I keep searching for the intense freshness and contrasting flavors and textures of good Vietnamese cooking exemplified by that meaty salad of a soup.

My latest find is Little Saigon City, a spring-roll-sized newcomer to Coral Gables. Though you could drive past without seeing it (I did -- twice), the 44-seater has won a loyal lunch following in its first six months.

It's owned by the very friendly Tran family, who came from the coastal city of Nha Trang last year. Teenagers Ken and Amy handle the front of the house while dad, Henry, mans the stoves. Despite straw hats hung from the ceiling and sprightly bamboo plants on the Formica tables, the room is charmless enough to encourage a culinary treasure hunter.

The cooking is equally elemental, with the most basic dishes done just well enough. Broths tend to be watery and cellophane noodle dishes taste rather like, um, cellophane. Still, if you order well, you are sure to find a favorite dish. You'd be hard-pressed to spend more than $20 per person, and service is speedy and sincere.

The cool spring rolls stuffed with fresh noodles, shrimp, carrots, lettuce and cilantro are on the bland side. A thick and earthy peanut paste lent some flavor, but I would have preferred something fresher.

The huge salads consist of lots of shredded cabbage and carrots, cilantro and chopped, dry-roasted peanuts in a sweet, vinegary dressing. The vegetarian Country Girl comes with tender slivers of fried tofu. The First Lady version has chicken and the Little Saigon, shrimp.

Traditional pho hit the spot, its light broth stocked with bracelets of red onion, ribbons of scallion and lots of bright green cilantro. Alongside were the requisite abundance of fresh seasonings including fresh Thai basil, crunchy bean sprouts, lime slivers and jalapeños. An order of either the chicken (pho ga) and popular brisket (pho tai chin) is big enough for two to share.

The egg flower and hot-and-sour soups had the same cornstarch-thickened broth with gloppy strands of scrambled egg, chopped veggies and mushy gray-green peas. Also skippable: a shrimp paste appetizer on sugar-cane skewers that had the taste and texture of a good teething toy.

A rice plate with thin strips of grilled pork and two tiny shrimp was tender and filling, though the advertised lemon grass was nowhere to be found. Vermicelli bowls (bun) were oomphless -- ask for extra chili sauce, limes and herbs to jazz them up.

Best from the Chinese side of the menu was the Mandarin chicken with tender, fried nuggets of meat in a sweet brown sauce. The Vegetarian Paradise lived up to its name with a glorious variety of produce -- corn, cabbage, mushrooms, green peppers, tiny broccoli blooms, large coins of carrot, snow peas, water chestnuts, green peas -- cooked in a creamy, white wine-tinged sauce. The chicken curry with unwieldy hunks of onion in a bland coconut-milk paste was not nearly as interesting.

Sweet endings are limited to coffee and to icy mung bean drinks like che bau ma made with cubes of neon-green agar-agar gelatin -- refreshing in a fake-o 1950s way, but two sips were enough for me.

A Vietnamese beer, ''33'' Export, is a decent but rather thin lager that is actually brewed by Heineken. The fairly priced wine selection is minuscule, but the Trans graciously encourage BYOBers with a modest $5 corkage fee.